The Myth of the Sex Drive
"My sex drive is just… gone." How many times have you said this, thought this, or heard a friend say this? I hear it in my clinic too often, usually said with a mix of shame, grief and a quiet or loud worry that something is broken. Let’s get a few things straight: biologically speaking, we don’t have a sex drive. The language we've inherited to describe desire has set so many of us up to feel like we're failing, we are broken, or there is something to fix.
A little history (because I am a nerd)
In Latin, libido translates to desire, longing, eagerness, pleasure, or lust. In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud honed in on our human sexuality and used libido to conceptualise sex as an internal, physiological drive, sitting in the same category as hunger and thirst; a pressure that builds up inside us and needs to be released. And so "the sex drive" was born.
Over a century later, this idea is still, well, everywhere. It's in the online sex drive quizzes, in the way partners compare themselves to each other, and in many ways health professionals still talk about sex. It's so normal that most of us never stop to question it.
Here's the problem with calling it a "sex drive"
Biologically speaking, drives exist to keep us alive. If you don't eat, you will die. If you don't drink water, you will die. Yes, as a species we need sex to reproduce, but no human has ever perished from a lack of orgasms! It might feel like it, but you haven't. When we think of desire as a drive, we start to imagine it like a fuel tank. It's either full or empty, and if it's empty, the tank must be broken. So when desire goes quiet (after having a baby, during a stressful season, with chronic pain or illness, after a diagnosis, in a long-term relationship, or simply with life), we assume something has gone wrong inside of us. Something we've lost and need to get back.
This framing leaves out the most important part of the story: context. Your body, your relationship, your stress levels, your history, your safety, and whether the sex you're having is actually something worth wanting.
When was the last time you took a slow shower and actually felt that you had a body?
So if it's not a drive, what is it?
Accurate, current sex research (check out Desire: An Inclusive Guide to Navigating Libido Differences in Relationships or Dr Emily Nagoski’s Come as you are) now understands libido not as a drive, but as part of our incentive-motivation system. Rather than being pushed from the inside by a biological need, we are drawn towards sex by what it offers us. Desire is the body and brain responding to something worth moving towards.
This is such good news, because it means desire is something we can understand, get curious about, and cultivate. YAY! When we know what motivates us, we can create more of the conditions that invite it in. People are motivated towards sex for so many reasons: to feel alive, to feel close and connected, to relieve stress, to reduce pain, to play, and to experience pleasure (and let's be honest, historically women's pleasure has not been centred in any way).
So the question shifts from "why is my sex drive broken?" to something much more useful "what would make sex worth wanting for me, right now?" Okay, so you're still here; let's break this down even further, because knowledge is power!
Spontaneous desire: the one we see in the movies
We can break desire down into two styles: spontaneous desire and responsive desire. Neither one is better, healthier or more normal than the other, FYI.
Spontaneous desire can seem to arrive out of nowhere… say you're washing the dishes or sitting in traffic and suddenly… you're horny. The wanting comes first, and then you go looking for the sexual experience. This is the dominant way our culture depicts desire. It appears in almost every film, TV show, romance novel, and advertisement. Two people lock eyes, and boom! Because most of us have only been shown this version, it's easy to believe it's the only real kind of desire, so if desire doesn't show up that way for you, it can make you feel broken.
Fun fact: even spontaneous desire isn't truly coming from nowhere. It's still responding to cues; they're just subtler or more internal (a passing thought, a memory, a smell, hormones, feeling rested and relaxed). The person just doesn't notice the cue, only the wanting.
Responsive desire: have you heard of this?
Maybe a simple make-out session and a shoulder rub - that’s intimacy too!
Responsive desire is libido that needs a sexual stimulus or cue to activate it. Instead of wanting first and then seeking sex, desire emerges in response to something already happening: touch, a kiss, closeness, a fantasy, feeling safe, relaxed and connected. You might start from a neutral place (willingness) and find your desire once pleasure has begun.
If you've ever thought "I wasn't really in the mood, but once we got going I was so glad we did", hello, that's responsive desire! Dr Rosemary Basson's circular model of sexual response explains this beautifully. Rather than desire always coming first, it shows how being open to intimacy can lead to arousal, and arousal can then lead to desire. Desire doesn't have to be the starting line; it can show up halfway through.
Now, a really important distinction: responsive desire is NOT about going along with it, pushing through, or overriding your body's no. Being willing is very different from feeling obliged. Responsive desire can only emerge when you feel free to stop, slow down, or change direction at any point. Without that freedom, desire has nothing to respond to.
Responsive desire is also incredibly common, and our desire style isn't fixed. Lots of us move between spontaneous and responsive across our lives: in long-term relationships, through parenting, stress, illness, pain, medication changes, and hormonal transitions like peri/menopause. Knowing about responsive desire changes the question again: instead of waiting to feel horny, how do you create space for intimacy and pleasure that gives desire something to respond to?
( *Clears throat; intimacy doesn't have to start, or end, with genital sex.)
Your sex drive is not broken
Dear reader, if you've read this and felt a quiet or loud knowing that you've been measuring yourself against the pervasive sex drive myth, I want you to know that your desire isn't broken and it hasn't disappeared. It may simply be waiting for different conditions, different cues, or a different kind of invitation. The work isn't about trying harder to feel horny; rather, it's about getting curious about what actually motivates you, and what your body needs to feel free enough to want.
If you'd like support exploring this, I would love to work with you.
Lauren Cummings is a Mental Health Occupational Therapist and Somatic Sexologist on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, working with individuals and couples in person and via telehealth across Australia. Her practice Back in My Body Therapies specialises in mental health, sexual health, pelvic pain, and nervous system regulation. Referrals accepted via Medicare Mental Health Care Plans, NDIS and private.